Oct. 8 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has responded to legal and ethical concerns about a series of ads praising him being paid for by taxpayers by announcing he and his super PAC will pay for them, drawing new corruption allegations.
Trump announced on Tuesday that after the backlash to the ad blitz leading into the midterm elections next month, he will use money raised by MAGA Inc. to pay for the advertisements moving forward. However, he denied any wrongdoing in funding the ads with taxpayer dollars, referring to it as a “rather standard thing to do.”
As of Wednesday morning, the ads are still being aired with the disclaimer “Paid for by the U.S. government.”
Democrats, some Republicans and ethics organizations sounded the alarm over the ads, which played during primetime television programs, news broadcasts and football games across the country.
The commercials, played in black and white, focus on Trump with a voiceover of him in one describing the “final battle” with the “sick political class that hates our country.” He refers to the “deep state” and “fake news media,” promising to “liberate America from these villains once and for all.”
The White House has also downplayed the partisanship of the ads, saying in a release on its official website that they are not partisan at all, instead framing them as public service announcements. Vice President JD Vance has said the same.
“The attacks on President Donald J. Trump’s public service announcements are highly dishonest,” the White House release reads. “The announcements are very clearly not campaign ads; President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action. Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending — at home, at the border and abroad.”
Trump, meanwhile, has told crowds at several political rallies for Republican candidates to vote like he is on the ballot. He has been hitting the campaign trail across the country urging voters to vote Republican with the same rhetoric featured in these commercials.
To support Trump’s claim that the ads and their government funding are a “rather standard thing to do,” the White House shared examples of past administrations running advertising campaigns.
The examples include the George W. Bush administration’s public service announcements explaining the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, the Obama administration’s ad campaign explaining the Affordable Care Act and eligibility and the Biden administration’s “We Can Do This” campaign to promote public health messaging to encourage people to get vaccinated for COVID-19.
Margaret Dylus-Yukins, Campaign Legal Center’s senior legal counsel for ethics, told UPI that the examples highlighted by the White House are distinctly different from the ads featuring Trump.
“The White House’s own examples do not align with their own messaging, saying these are public messages to remind Americans to love their country,” she said. “They use examples that are clearly, historically, tied to public health messaging and federal programs regarding healthcare for American citizens. These advertisements clearly do not fit the description that the White House is using to describe them.”
The disclaimer that the commercials are paid for by the U.S. government implies more than just funding went into their production. It implies that federal employees in their official capacities were tasked with using federal resources to produce and distribute them at the direction of higher ranking officials, including Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.
The New York Times reported last week that Trump ordered Vought to find funding for the advertisements, to which Vought allocated about $20 million of funds that were marked for the Department of Homeland Security.
The Department of Homeland Security was at the center of two partial government shutdowns this year as the Trump administration sought to pass a package to fund U.S. Customs and Border Protection following the killings of civilians and U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January. The package was held up for months before a majority of Republicans and more than 20 Democrats agreed to sign a funding bill to fund most of the department in April.
The Hatch Act, passed in 1939, established restrictions for many government employees, limiting the political activities they can participate in. It prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities through their official capacities as a government employee. It also prohibits federal employees from coercing or compelling other federal employees to participate in political activities.
Using government funds, resources and employees to produce and distribute political advertisements may be a violation of the law.
The Trump administration has already faced allegations of violating the Hatch Act. During the partial government shutdown last fall, the administration ran commercials that blamed Democrats for the shutdown. This was just one instance in which Common Cause saw grounds to file a lawsuit against the administration alleging that it had violated the Hatch Act and other federal laws.
The Common Cause lawsuit has yet to be resolved.
With Trump shifting funding from taxpayers to his super PAC Maga Inc., a new set of legal and ethical complaints arise. Campaign Legal Center has filed a complaint against Trump with the Federal Elections Commission last month, alleging that he has violated campaign finance laws that prohibit federal officeholders from raising and spending super PAC money.
The complaint focuses on Trump’s control and use of soft money, money that does not comply with federal contribution limits, prohibitions on certain sources of contributions and FEC reporting requirements.
Erin Choplak, Campaign Legal Center’s senior director of campaign finance, told UPI that Trump has made clear in numerous public statements that he controls MAGA Inc. Trump also reiterated his authority over MAGA Inc., in his social media post announcing that it will pay for the advertisements in question.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in the 2010 case Citizens United vs. FEC, removed limits on political spending by corporations and labor unions toward super PACs — political organizations that are independent of political candidates. The independence of a super PAC is a key distinction in that granting a candidate unlimited fundraising ability from single-source donors raises concerns about corruption.
“When a particularly wealthy person can just hand over a big check to somebody in a position to reward them, that creates a clear appearance of corruption and may well create actual corruption,” Choplak said. “In this instance, when the president of the United States is controlling a fund that is receiving huge donations from wealthy donors, the very same donors that are seeking to extract benefits from the president himself, the corruption concerns that presents are obvious and it’s illegal.”
Campaign Legal Center says that MAGA Inc., has raised more than $400 million for Trump. In an Oval Office press conference last month, Trump told a reporter that he believes the PAC has raised nearly $1 billion. Campaign Legal Center included an excerpt of these comments in its complaint.
“So I’ll be spending. We’ll be spending,” Trump said. “We’re going to spend a lot of money because we don’t want to lose our country.”
Trump would go on how he solely makes the decision on how to spend MAGA Inc. funds.
“How do I make it? I sit down and I say, ‘let’s do this, let’s do that,'” Trump said. “I’m going to spend whatever amount of money necessary to try to help us. And this is money from MAGA Inc. This is my money that I control.”
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